By Susan Jedrzejewski, McColl Center for Visual Art

On July 2, 2012 McColl Center for Visual Art welcomes two artists, Guthrie Ramsey and Kellie Jones, to begin one-month terms as Knight Artists-in-Residence. While this husband and wife team will have individual residences, their experience will overlap when they partner to explore the musical and visual cultures that exist in the southeast region. With a breadth of experience studying and writing about migration and African American culture in the southern United States, Ramsey and Jones will use the time at McColl Center for Visual Art to research and explore Charlotte’s culture. Time willing, the artists will also travel to Durham, Charleston, Savannah, and Beauford, SC to gain an even deeper base of knowledge that will be later extracted during studio time. All of their combined experiences in the field will be then incorporated into their next body of work.

Dr. Kellie Jones addresses issues in contemporary art and museum theory, she is a scholar of African American and Latin American artists. She has worked as a curator for over two decades and has more than twenty-five major national and international exhibitions to her credit. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and her writings have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues and journals. Her book, EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art has been named one of the top art books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly.

Dr. Guthrie P. Ramsey is a musician and teacher, he specializes in African-American and American music, jazz, cultural studies, popular music, film studies, and historiography. Experimenting with R&B, Latin, and Hip Hop fusions, he has been recognized for his sound compositions. Dr. Ramsey’s band, Dr. Guy’s MusiQology, has performed for audiences throughout the world. A professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Ramsey is the author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop and has been published in The New York Times and Black Music Research Journal.

During Open Studio Saturdays on July 14 and 28 from 11 AM to 6 PM, visitors to McColl Center for Visual Art can view the current exhibition Squared, and meet both Jones and Ramsey in their studios, along with the rest of the current artists-in-residences.